All music used for testing by RateTheMusic is fully authorized by the appropriate record companies, management companies and/or the artists themselves.

What is RateTheMusic?

RateTheMusic is the leading website giving music fans the chance to let their opinions be heard regarding a variety of music styles. Your opinions are seen by radio programmers and record company decision-makers around the world, and you can have a real influence on the music played on radio (traditional, satellite, and Internet) and sold online and in stores. Your feedback helps determine artists' careers.

RateTheMusic is FREE. Your opinions are always presented anonymously - we respect your privacy. Your information will never be shared with or sold to any third party.

Becoming a member of RateTheMusic, or a member of our participant radio stations' panels, is FREE. The Macromedia Flash Player used to listen to our music is also FREE.

How do I change my personal information?

How do I change my password?

How do I change my email address?

What if my taste in music has changed?

What if my favorite music style has changed?

After you log in to the RateTheMusic system using your current information, you'll see a menu choice for My Profile. You can change any/all of your registration information there. It is important to update your email in our system, either before or immediately after you disable your old email address, since our system will automatically delete your registration if it gets word from your old email provider that the user is unknown or deleted.

Why do you ask so many questions when people sign up?

The sign-up process for RateTheMusic asks for a lot of details because our surveys are targeted to our raters based on many factors (such as your favorite music style, age, geographic location, etc.).

I told you all about me when I signed up - why are you asking me to verify my information again?

Over time, your personal information and music tastes can change, so we 're-screen' our raters approximately four times a year (once every three months). This gives us the most current, accurate picture of your tastes in music.

Why don't you have more music styles to choose from?

I don't see my favorite style of music listed...?

RateTheMusic offers a number of music styles for raters to choose from, but there obviously exist many more types of music than we offer (for example, Classical, Big Band, Death Metal, Polka, etc.).

This is due to the reality of business: our clients are mainly radio stations and record labels, and if there are no clients needing to test a given style of music, then we do not offer it as a choice or gather any raters in that style.

As national music trends and styles are always changing, we monitor them very closely, and we add/delete/modify our available music styles as needed on an ongoing basis.

How can the radio station I work for sign up for RateTheMusic?

How can the radio station I work for get RateTheMusic?

How can the radio station I work for start using RateTheMusic?

At this time, the RateTheMusic service is available on a barter basis only to commercial terrestrial radio stations. If this describes your situation, email us by going to the Contact Us section and selecting "I work for a radio station that is interested in using RateTheMusic"

What do you do with the race/ethnicity information?

What if I don't want to reveal my race/ethnicity?

Why do you ask for my race/ethnicity?

Although we ask for your race/ethnicity, you are not required to reveal it in order to sign up with RateTheMusic. You are able to choose "Undisclosed" if you wish. Regardless of what you select, we do not include or exclude raters from participating based on race/ethnicity information.

We're sorry to see you go, but we understand. You can go to http://ratethemusic.com/remove to remove yourself from our system. Thank you for your participation!

What if I want to participate in surveys from more than one radio station?

What if I want to participate in surveys for more than one music style?

You will need to sign up with a different email address for each music style or radio station you're interested in.

Why don't you play the whole song?

Why do you only play part of the song?

At RateTheMusic, we are committed to protecting the artists and record labels we represent. Unfortunately, in many cases we cannot allow the entire song to be played on our surveys because of the possibility of someone trying to illegally record the song.

Also, the clips keep the surveys as short as possible, because we know your time is valuable! 10 seconds for a song clip vs. 3-4 minutes for a full song would really add up over the length of an entire survey!

What kind of surveys will I receive?

There are up to four (4) different types of surveys in which you may participate with RateTheMusic. If you signed up through a local radio station's web site link, you will receive surveys from that radio station only. If during your sign-up process you indicated that you would also like to participate in national surveys, you may receive national music rating surveys, special record company surveys, and/or movie surveys, according to your selections during the sign-up process.

Why do my surveys have the same songs every week?

Why are most of the songs in the surveys the same?

Often, from survey to survey some or most of the songs are the same. Our weekly surveys are derived from the top songs (most-played nationally) in a given music style; therefore, the overall list of songs often may not change significantly from week to week. For example "Song A" might be #30 on the chart one week, #27 the next week, and #23 the week after that, so it will show up in three consecutive surveys. If a song goes all the way to #1, and then comes down the chart, this often means 20-30 weeks total on the chart, so it's in 20-30 consecutive surveys. The reason these surveys are sent, and are important, is that the results help radio programmers gauge changes in airplay for the songs on their stations, which affects the movement of songs in the charts from one week to the next. Your honest rating of these songs is vital to help determine local radio airplay and national chart positions of these songs.

Does RateTheMusic offer prizes, rewards or other compensation for completing surveys?

RateTheMusic does not offer rewards, prizes, points, etc. for completing surveys, and there is no mention of this anywhere on our website. (If you do find such a mention anywhere on RateTheMusic, please let us know where, so we can correct it.) RateTheMusic is driven by people like you, who are passionate about music and who want their opinions to help shape artists' careers and determine what music gets played on radio and sold in stores and online. If you signed up to participate under the impression that there would be rewards, or if you want to opt out at any time for any reason, you may do so via this link: http://ratethemusic.com/css_remove.cgi/rtm

Every rater's opinions count! Keep in mind that you are one among hundreds (sometimes thousands) of raters completing a given survey, so songs you don't like (and rate with low scores) may still be favorites of large numbers of other people across the country, and may continue to appear in surveys due to significant national airplay.

Why don't I see the song title and/or artist when I rate the songs?

Sometimes I do see the song title and/or artist, sometimes I don't... why not?

Most often, the artists' names are intentionally not shown so that you can concentrate on your feelings for the particular song clip, and not be distracted by your feelings about the artists themselves.

At the end of most surveys that don't show artist names, you are able to view a playlist of the entire survey, showing you all song titles and artists.

Technically, there's nothing wrong. This is typically related to your connection speed to the Internet. Sometimes the Internet (like a series of 'pipes' carrying information) gets clogged up with lots of junk, and only a little bit of information gets through at a time. When this happens, the songs aren't getting to your computer as fast as they need to in order to play correctly. You might hear this as "choppy" or "broken-up" songs, or as static. We suggest trying your survey at a different time of the day.

Why don't you make MP3 files available for your songs?

Why don't you use Windows Media Player for your songs?

Why can't you use some other audio format and/or media player?

There are many different types of players and file formats available, and unfortunately it's not possible to accommodate them all. We've selected a single, widely-accepted audio format and a free, easy-to-use proprietary music player. This reduces the variables, and protects the songs, artists, and record labels we represent.

Nothing happens when I click the Play button - what should I do?

While taking the survey, I was not able to hear the songs being played...?

This is usually due to a problem with your firewall hardware and/or software. You may need to inform these products that it's ok to let our songs through.

You may also want to visit http://adobe.com and get the latest version of the Flash Player, the current supported player is version 9 or higher.

Should I update my Flash music player?

Do I need to upgrade my Flash music player?

If you receive a pop-up message prompting you to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe's free Flash music player (required to participate in RateTheMusic), we recommend that you please do so. This is simply the normal, periodic updating of the software that you're already using to listen to music on RateTheMusic.

If you don't update at this time, your current version of the Flash player will continue to work for some time, but moving up to the latest version will keep you up current with the latest system requirements and features.

How can I improve the music playback quality?

Typically, a faster computer will play Flash content faster. A fast connection to the Internet will enable Flash content to be downloaded to your computer at a faster rate. Try closing all other applications other than your web browser while taking surveys. Also, increase the amount of cache allocated to your browser to 10 MB. Macintosh users should increase the amount of system memory allocated to the Web browser to at least 20 MB.

I keep getting invitations to take surveys, but when I go to take them it says I have no surveys currently available to me, why?

Surveys are typically open for seven (7) days. Since the results are time-sensitive, if you wish to have your opinions count, you should try to complete the survey as soon possible after you receive the invitation. After the survey closes, it is no longer available to take, even though the invitation email may still be in your "in box."

Why am I receiving invitations to surveys from my local radio station and also from RateTheMusic?

If you signed up through a link on a radio station website and you indicated that you were interested in participating in national surveys, you may receive surveys from that radio station as well as surveys from RateTheMusic.

Why did my friend receive an invitation to take a survey but I didnt?

There are a few reasons why this may happen. Even if you both selected the same music style, you both may be different ages, live in different locations (zip codes, cities, states, or even countries) etc., so you will not necessarily receive the same survey invitation(s) at the same time. We use a complex set of criteria to determine who receives surveys, and this simply may not have been your turn to receive one.

How do I take surveys?

I've signed up but haven't received any survey invitations yet - why not?

When do I get another survey?

Once you've signed up, look for survey invitation emails from us. Survey invitations are sent out on a weekly basis, but not every rater will receive one every week. Our internal system looks at every rater individually and sends invitations based on a number of factors, including favorite music style, age, gender, geographic location, etc. Our system also looks at how frequently you receive surveys and will not send you every survey, so you don't get "burned out" by being asked to take too many.

I used to get survey invitations all the time, but now I don't get any surveys - why not?

When will I get another survey invitation?

I haven't received a survey invitation in a long time - why not?

There are a few reasons why you may not be receiving survey invitations. Here are a few of the common reasons:

Some surveys are open on an ongoing basis, so no specific invitation is needed. If any of these are available for you, you'll see them immediately upon logging into the site.

Survey invitations are sent out based on a complex set of rules. You will not receive every invitation we send out.

You (or your Internet Service Provider) may have recently installed or upgraded spam-filtering software to eliminate junk email. Emails from us might now be getting caught there. Please log in to the RateTheMusic system, select My Profile, and make sure all of your information is correct. Then at the completion of the process you'll see a list of possible email addresses that should be allowed to send you email from our system.

If you've changed your email address, but didn't let us know, we haven't been able to communicate with you. Please attempt to login using your OLD email address and password to change your email address. If this doesn't work, our system has already removed you because your old email provider told our system the address was unknown or no longer in service. If you want to continue to receive surveys, you'll need to sign up again.

If you have not responded to a number of consecutive invitations, you may have been removed from our system due to inactivity. If you want to continue to receive surveys, you'll need to sign up again.

Typically, a faster computer will play Flash content faster. A fast connection to the Internet will enable Flash content to be downloaded to your computer at a faster rate. Try closing all other applications other than your web browser while taking surveys. Also, increase the amount of cache allocated to your browser to 10 MB. Macintosh users should increase the amount of system memory allocated to the Web browser to at least 20 MB.

Should I update my Flash music player?

Do I need to upgrade my Flash music player?

If you receive a pop-up message prompting you to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe's free Flash music player (required to participate in RateTheMusic), we recommend that you please do so. This is simply the normal, periodic updating of the software that you're already using to listen to music on RateTheMusic.

If you don't update at this time, your current version of the Flash player will continue to work for some time, but moving up to the latest version will keep you up current with the latest system requirements and features.

RateTheMusic's music and entertainment news are provided to us by an outside company. They make every effort to ensure the accuracy of their items. Occasionally, an erroneous item may be reported, but they correct any such errors as soon as possible.

This website or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means(electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of RCS.

RateTheMusic and RateTheMusic.com are registered trademarks of RCS and its parent company.Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.